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Lead Exposure Kills Hundreds of Thousands of Adults Every Year in the US, Study Finds (theguardian.com)
Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Last week, a massive new study concluded that lead is 10 times more dangerous than thought, and that past exposure now hastens one in every five U.S. deaths. Researchers at four North American universities, led by Bruce Lanphear, of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, studied the fate of 14,289 people whose blood had been tested in an official U.S. survey between 1988 and 1994. Four fifths of them had harbored levels of the toxic metal below what has, hitherto, been thought safe. The study found that deaths, especially from cardiovascular disease, increased markedly with exposure, even at the lowest levels. It concluded that lead kills 412,000 people a year -- accounting for 18% of all U.S. mortality, not much less than the 483,000 who perish as a result of smoking. The study has been published in the Lancet Public Health journal.
That's not exactly what they say. What they say is that 1/10th of a dose does not have 1/10th of the effect, as would be expected, but way more than 1/10th.
It's still a far cry from the homeopathetic claim that 1/10th of a dose has ten times the effect.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Right but it does explain how people got by eating and drinking from leaded pewter dishes every day while slathering them selves in lead based make up; and how later people managed to be mostly okay breathing exhaust from leaded gasoline.
It explains quite nicely how a small amount of lead can cause both serious problems and at the same time mass lead exposure did not destroy society. Although there is thinking that it impacted crime rates.
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It's interesting to note the lead has been known to be toxic since at least the time of the ancient greeks. And yet the paint industry used it as its main component for white paint until something like WWII. They used the same tactics that have been later used by Big Tobacco and climate change deniers to delay change by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Particularly paying respected professionals (doctors, etc) to publish and deny toxicity.
How do we know that ? When they were finally convicted, their archives were forced to become public and proved a treasure trove of assholery (or is that assholeness ?) There are several recent books and publications about that (namely in Scientific American)
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It explains quite nicely how a small amount of lead can cause both serious problems and at the same time mass lead exposure did not destroy society.
Nothing of the sort.
A small dose is proportionally more harmful than a larger dose, not more harmful in an absolute sense. Basically what the study says is double the dose does not result in double the damage.
If you've been exposed to lead, exposing yourself to more lead will not improve your situation... so put down that paint smoothie.
=Smidge=
No. So no that it's just scary.
Type 1 diabetes means "requires insulin". No more, no less. The most common form of it is an auto-immune problem that destroys insulin producing cells. There is actually an effective treatment in testing at Mass. General Hospital, by Dr. Faustmann's lab, using the BCG vaccine in small doses to modify the white cell response and allow adult stem cells to transform into insulin producing cells. It's *very* exciting stuff.
There is a great deal of immunological analysis and some biological testing that shows autoimmune Type 1 is triggered by infection, especially variants of the Coxsackie B flu virus. It's why some researchers have been trying to provide a diabetes vaccine. Part of the problem is that flu viruses mutate very quickly and very effictively, so even an effective vaccine wouldn't last long.
Lead is a problem, but for pete's sake don't mix it up with other issues.
Many believe that tetraethyl lead is responsible for the rise in violent crime in the 70s and 80s, tracking the increase in cars and gasoline consumption in the post WW2 years. Likewise the drop in violent starting around 1990 was the effect of lead-free gas.
Other than the availability of safe, legal abortions, it's about the only factor anyone's come up with that explains the prevalence of the violent crime trend across countries and legal jurisdictions with very different philosophies with respect to crime. In the US the reduction parallels an increase in gun sales, but the same trend occurs in countries where gun sales are flat or have gone down.
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The fact that for a long time so many societies had shorter lifespans seems to be irrelevant, doesn't it?
Violent Crime dropped in the US after removing lead from gasoline. After research, we have found out how lead affects the chemistry in the brain. The link actually exists and the science backs it up. Lead does nasty things over a lifetime.
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Quite. In fact I recall a study done analyzing violent crime rates around the world that found in every country violent crime started climbing ~20 years after the introduction of leaded gasoline, and began falling ~20 years after it was eliminated. Basically, if you grew up breathing lead fumes, you were more likely to commit violent crimes as an adult. The fact that every country introduced and banned leaded gasoline at different times helps to eliminate most other confounding factors that might have been responsible.
Not at all surprising as a social observation, considering we know that on an individual level lead exposure in childhood tends to boost aggressiveness while reducing impulse control.
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